Lessons Before Living: A Groundhog Day fanfic
by Matrix Refugee
Summary: Twentyfive years later, Phil Conners shares a secret with his son...


+J.M.J.+

Disclaimer:

I do not "own" the characters, concepts or other indicia of _Groundhog Day_, which are the property of Howard Ramis, Columbia Pictures, et al.

Author's note:

Sometimes I feel as if I'm one of the very few people who "gets" the message of _Groundhog Day_; it's one of my favorite flicks, and it never fails to remind me how precious each day really is…while it makes me laugh my head off.

**Lessons Before Living**

By "Matrix Refugee"

Date: February 2, 2022 19:31:26

From: punxyphil@wpnx.com

To: jamieconnor@nyfilminstitute.com

Subject: RE: Kerry dumped me, I wanna drop out

Dear Jamie,

I know you're fed up with school, you're mad that Kerry gave you back the ring, and you just want to heave your job off a cliff. We've all been there. I've been there, and so has your mother. I understand why you don't want to come back to Punxy: I called it a hole in the ground myself until I got to know the place better. Thing is, when life drops a box of junk on your back, there are only two things you can do: you can lie under it and curse it till you're livid, which doesn't do anyone any good, least of all yourself, or you can crawl out from under it and find out what that box really holds.

Something similar happened to me, only I wasn't as young. It wasn't until I hit my late thirties that I finally woke up and started to live, I mean really live, not just breathing out and breathing in.

Back when I worked as a weatherman for a local station in Pittsburgh, I used to cover the Groundhog Day Festival; that much you already knew. But the year I married your mother and we settled in Punxy, something happened, something really weird, something straight out of some sci-fi flick.

The three of us—your mother, our camera guy Larry, and I—arrived in Punxy late in the afternoon of February 1. Next morning we covered Phil the groundhog "doing his stuff" at Gobbler's Knob; afterward we tried to head back to Pittsburgh, but we got turned back: a blizzard I _swore_ was heading out to sea had buried the highway and caused a lot of tractor-trailer jack-knifing, leaving the roads impassible. So we turned back to weather it in Punxy. We had no other choice. The usual dumb luck. That much went normally.

Next morning, I woke up to Sonny and Cher yawpin' "I got you, babe" on the clock radio. I got up, expecting it to be February 3. But something went awry. The gonzo DJs were yammering about Groundhog Day. At first I thought it was some sick prank they'd decided to play or the tape from the day before.

Oh, some tape was replaying, looping on itself with me caught in it. And the tape was GROUNDHOG DAY!

I lost count of all the days I woke up to Groundhog Day yet again. It numbered in the triple digits anyway. At first I tried to go with the flow and find some way out, but like that blizzard-locked highway, there was no other way to go but back. Then I decided to take advantage of this opportunity…in all senses of the phrase.

Looking back, I'm not proud of how I used this time loop. I worked my way through the seven deadly sins as if there were no tomorrow (for the simple reason that, from where I sat there WAS no tomorrow). Illegal pleasures (illegal in the eyes of the State and in the eyes of the Man Upstairs) weren't out of the question; your mother knows only half the stuff I did in that time frame—if it counted as a time frame. Some stuff I did out of sheer malice, just to do it because no tomorrow was coming; other stuff I did because I'd wondered what it was like. I leave it all to your fertile imagination.

I've wondered a lot about that "time" or whatever it was. Did I get caught in a time loop or did I pass back and forth between alternate dimensions? I've read everything that Einstein and Planck and Stephen Hawking have to say about time and dimension, but I've come away with more questions than answers. "Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved," says an old Arabic proverb. That's as good an answer for me.

I realize, until the Groundhog Day (Days?), I never really lived. For the first thirty-seven years of my life, I just existed, just buzzed along the highway of life. If that's the case, then I'm really not much older than you, I'm just more experienced, though not always the right way. How's it feel to have an old man who's sixty-two on the outside and about twenty-five on the inside ;^))?

By now your head is spinning. Imagine how _my_ head was whirling when I hit that tape loop or whatever it was! But it served its purpose: I finally learned how to live. It took me probably _years_ of days to finally get it straight. But I learned what really matters in life: not things, not power, not a snazzy career. It's all about helping the next guy and helping yourself through helpin others.

I had to figure it all out for myself by myself. If this was a sci-fi flick, I could have used some wise man dude guiding me, like Obi-Wan Kenobi or the George Carlin character in that airhead movie with Keanu Reeves in it or that Laurence Fishburne character in the black trench coat and sunglasses. Looking back, I realized it did me a lot more good, and it probably served me right. I'd always prided myself on knowing all the answers, but those days forced me to realize something: I didn't have all the answers, and most of the ones I had were the wrong answers to the wrong questions.

Years later, I was flipping through one of your mother's books when a passage caught my eye. The writer, speaking about God, said, "A day is as thousand days to You, and to You a thousand years is as a day." I know now that God gave me a tremendous gift when He gave me a thousand chances to get one day right. He could have left me there, _Twilight Zone_ style (Gotcha! I knew you'd be singing "neener-neener, neener-neener, neener-neener…." by now!), but in His mercy—which can look so merciless sometimes—He let me have a little taste of hell to shock me back to reality.

Yeah, yeah, I hear you saying that every day is similar: you gotta get up, shave, breathe in, breathe out, put down the seat on the toilet, work, play, eat, read, help the next guy in need. Hey, I've been tempted to slack off. I'm certainly no saint by any stretch of the imagination. But the thought of getting snagged in that loop again chills my blood. Who knows but the next time, I might get jammed in the tape loop. For Good. Satre wasn't kidding when he said "Hell is other people", but he only told half the story. In another of your mother's books, the autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux, the author told God that He could send her to hell if He so willed, she'd just go about her business doing good, helping others if that would give the damned souls a chance at what they missed out on. I suppose that would give them a double-whammy: they'd realize where they went wrong, but they'd also realize it was too late to choose otherwise than the gussied-up darkness they'd committed themselves to. 

I found out the real meaning of "Live each day as if it were your last". It means doing the most good you can in sixteen hours and keep it up for however long you have to live. I know: "That's easy for you to say" and "Yeah right, be a little ray of sunlight". It's not being a little ray of sunlight: it's just being the candle, the vehicle for the light, the lens through which the light passes to burn an image onto the negative of time.

Funny I should start talking about candles. This morning, your mother and I went up to the Society of St. John's village where you cousin Jake and his wife live now; we took part in the Candlemas procession. I don't know how or when the groundhog got muddle with today's feast day, but it can't hold a candle (ha! ha!) to the real feast. Candles. They symbolize what we are supposed to be to other people. We're supposed to be get lit with divine fire and burn ourselves out at the service of others, and God through them.

Well, I never thought much about it till now. You know I've held back as far as the Faith or just faith in general is concerned. But now that I'm sliding into my dotage, I've started thinking seriously about what to do with my tattered but still kicking soul. The Society has a great catechism class for adults; I've enrolled in it just to get the last answers to my questions. If you've been slacking up on practicing the Faith, you just might want to pull in the slack before it all unravels. You're not just accountable to your fellow man, you're also accountable to the Man Upstairs. If you put each day into His hands from the first, not a second will go to waste. If only I'd known about this stuff sooner…

You'll probably leave this message in your inbox. Or worse, you might delete it and not speak to me next time you call us. Just remember: we'll always love us, no matter what you choose to do. And remember: every day is another chance to get it right.

Take care of yourself, inside and out.

Your dad

Date: February 4, 2022 17:03:03

From: jamieconnor@nyfilminstitute.com  
To: pnxyphil@wpnx.com

Subject: Live every day as if it were your last.

Dear Pop

Whoa, that was weird! I talked to Kerry about it and she says it might make a good idea for a movie (BTW: she asked for the ring back last night)

School's doing better, so's the job: that manager who kept giving me grief got told by his boss to take an early retirement. Changed my mind about changing my major: I just might stay put so I can work on a movie about your Groundhog Day experience.

Thanks for the words of wisdom. You were right.

Till next time,

Jamie


End file.
